Pac-Man on Atari 2600

[Moirai]

After acquiring the game a day ago, i fail to see why people hate it so much.


Sure, its different than the arcade, but does that make it a bad game?


Only beef i have with it is the flickering ghosts. everything else is just different, not necessarily worse. For example, the hit detection is much stricter on the 2600, but i feel like that fits the pace of the game. If the 2600's hit detection was as lenient as the arcade version, the game would be too easy IMO.


So what do yall think about this subject. it's been a big issue for over 30 years now... i think most of the hate the game got on release was mostly due to rampant fanboyism, not because its actually a BAD game.


heres a little experiment: pretend pac-man was originally a 2600 game, and was never released in the arcades or any other platform. would it still be considered bad?

[NeoZeedeater]

I agree the hate is overblown but it was a disappointment. The 2600 could do a lot better (see Ms. Pac-Man).

[Guntz]

It's a pretty impressive "port" considering it was one guy and hardly any development time. Did he even have the arcade source code to look at?

I don't own a copy of 2600 Pac-Man currently so I can't really participate. I have Ms. and Jr. though, great games.

[sketch]

I hated it when I had it as a kid. It was slow, flickery and boring. Don't have any way of trying it now, but it's hard not to compare it to the arcade. I mean, the whole point was to be able to play Pac Man at home.

[Jeckidy]

Technically inept in terms of production, yes. But it plays like the game is supposed to play. Don't really see the problem with it, either.

[A Black Falcon]

I agree, the game isn't one of the best 2600 games for sure, but it's playable, and didn't seem as awful to me as the hype suggests either.

[16-bit]

I agree as well. Dare I say it, I actually had fun with it.

I've also played much worse Atari 2600 games.

Was this really one of the reasons for the crash? Did people just collectively decide that Pacman and ET were just so bad that they gave up on video games?

[TemplarX]

I agree with you that on its own merits it is not a terrible game. My 7 year old self loved the 2600 version when I first got it. But now with so many other other versions available, the 2600 version is not a game I play anymore.

[Gogogadget]

THE WORST GAME OF ALL TIME no not really it's just an underpowered console trying to run a next-gen game.

I played this on an emulator once out of curiosity and whilst it's not the best version of Pac-Man of course, I really don't see what's so bad about it, it's just relegated to historical curiosity because of the superior and easier to find ports.

[profholt82]

The VCS port was considered an abomination at the time of its release. Atari wanted to get it on the market as soon as possible, so it was extremely rushed. Sure, it's playable, but the Intellivision port that came out the following year embarrasses it by comparison. Atari got the first port on store shelves and sold something like 7 million copies as a result (it was the biggest selling video game for years), but the quality was poor compared to the home ports which came out the following year. It's fine that you like it, Alec Rob, but considering all of the arcade-perfect ports that are available today, I have no idea why anyone would actually want to play it anymore, other than out of curiosity.


Gogogadget, make no mistake about it, the VCS was capable of a much better port. This one was so poor simply because it was so rushed. Take a look at the Ms Pac-Man port if you want to see how capable the VCS was.

[Kamahl]

People hate it because it could have looked like this instead:

[Moirai]

I've been playing this game a lot. Current high score is 4048 on the standard settings.


Never been so great at any Pacman game but I'm actually enjoying this game. It's quite underrated.

[gamevet]

Did he even have the arcade source code to look at?

Now that's funny!

The source code wouldn't have done him any good. The VCS pretty much only had 4k to work with.

I saved up some cash and when I got money on my birthday, I went to the local Ben Franklin to purchase a copy for $28. I was just happy to have something that played like PAC-MAN, even though it was somewhat disappointing. I still had a pretty good time with it, but it wasn't a game I would spend a massive amount of time with, like I did with Centipede or Missile Command.

[maxi]

It's a lazy port but still plays fine.

[Zef]

AlecRob and I got together to play some good old fashioned Pac-Man... Well, that and the 2007 remake of Pac-Man.